Oilers still trying to figure out woeful special teams

Take away special teams and the Edmonton Oilers are savouring a victory over the Colorado Avalanche Thursday night, gaining speed and strength after five wins in the last six games.

Instead, they lost the game, lost more ground in the standings and are back at the drawing board trying to remedy a season-long affliction, because it doesn’t matter how good you are five-on-five if both ends of your specials teams are a mess.

It’s like saying: ‘Tthis is a really great car, aside from the faulty steering and brakes.’

Power play and penalty kill are the lifeblood of a hockey team, which explains why the Oilers dressing room looks like the morning after The Red Wedding.

And they were the difference once again in a 4-3 overtime loss that saw Colorado go one-for-one on the power play, while Edmonton went 0-for-3 and gave up a short-handed goal.

“Obviously we’re not happy with that,” defenceman and penalty-killing regular Kris Russell said after Friday’s optional practice. “We’re working on it, trying to do our best, but in saying that it’s not good enough.

“We have to execute and we have to kill off penalties. That has to be a source of momentum, especially late here in the season; we have to build off our power plays and PKs. We have to start playing better in that regard.”

The penalty-killing numbers are especially bizarre, with Edmonton boasting the best penalty-kill efficiency in the NHL on the road at 86.6 per cent (11 goals on 82 chances) while posting the worst numbers in league history at home — 34 goals on 77 chances for 55.8 per cent.

“It’s frustrating when you’re a killer and you’re giving up goals, obviously,” said Russell. “We understand where we’re at and being on the ice when you get scored on is not fun, it’s not like we enjoy that. It’s just about executing, bearing down, blocking shots, getting pucks out. We just have to be better.”

The power play is consistently bad no matter where it plays — 29th at home, 25th on the road, 30th overall. It’s woeful success rate, 14.2 per cent, is actually flattering giving their recent swan dive of three goals in the last 50 chances, or a mind-boggling six per cent. Combine the power play and penalty kill numbers and it really doesn’t matter what happens five-on-five, the Oilers can’t win until this gets fixed.

“Last year, our special teams won us games and it’s been the complete reverse this year,” said Milan Lucic. “Our special teams is not winning us games, it’s even losing us games. That’s been the biggest difference this year.”

Lucic said there haven’t been any major tweaks or changes from last year’s power play, which finished the season fifth in the NHL. It just stopped working.

“It’s just not finding it’s way in like it was last year,” said Lucic. “The crispness and sharpness and the attack at the net was way better last year than it is this year.

“It almost seemed like even if we didn’t score on a power play last year, it was still a source of momentum. This year, if we don’t score it’s almost like it brings us down and deflates us. That mindset heading into the next game is what we need to change more than anything.”

It seems to have become a psychological issue now, where the penalty killers are almost expecting bad things to happen and the power play is quick to frustration.

“I don’t think you expect bad things to happen,” said head coach Todd McLellan. “But you hold your breath more than you normally would and you tend to play a little more cautious when your penalty kill isn’t performing at a high level and you’re not getting the power-play goals. The game becomes tighter.

“We’re obviously well aware that those areas need to get better.”

Lucic said clearing their minds and not dwelling on how bad they’ve been so far might just be the best remedy moving forward.

“The mindset has to be that you have to park what happened in the first 50 games as far as power play and PK and just start off fresh and new with these last 32 games,” he said. “Sometimes all it takes is one bounce and things start clicking again like they used to. We just have to go out there and find it and create it.”

In the meantime, the search continues.

“We’re still in the middle of the process,” said McLellan. “Trying to find solutions, moving people around, changing the timing of using certain people, looking at systematics stuff, moving people around on the power play and penalty kill, that won’t change.”

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